OFA pauses big-donor outreach till November

President Barack Obama’s advocacy group, Organizing for Action, will stop soliciting major contributions at the end of May through Election Day this fall, leaving more room for Democrats to draw from the same donor pool as the midterm elections approach.

The group, launched in early 2013 and drawing on the president’s reelection campaign infrastructure, raised more than $32 million during its first five quarters in existence. As a result, some Democrats have worried that money that would have gone to their campaigns and committees was instead going to an organization that has expressly declared itself nonpartisan.

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In a letter sent to OFA’s biggest donors and obtained by POLITICO, development director Kathy Gasperine wrote that, as of May 31, the group “will not be giving significant priority to seeking out new major donors to Organizing for Action because we know that many of our financial supporters’ focus will naturally shift to the midterm elections in which we do not participate.”

Instead, she said in the early May letter, the group will spend the next six months “work[ing] to strengthen our relationships we have with our national leadership, continue our robust digital organizing, and utilize our megaphone to continue to activate our network into issue advocacy.”

The news of the memo and shift in priorities was first reported by The Associated Press.

While OFA will suspend major donor outreach over the next six months, it still will make standard email requests for contributions and will not turn down large checks. It plans to return to active outreach to major donors in November, a Democratic source said.

The pause in solicitations is an acknowledgement that major donors face an onslaught of requests for their time and money come campaign season.

“We understand and expect that some of our more than 420,000 contributors will choose to shift their focus during the midterm season,” spokesman Ben Finkenbinder said.

The pause in big-donor solicitation comes as OFA’s staffing also ebbs, from a peak of around 200 to about half as many workers. The group grew from a small core early in 2013 as it took on a range of issues including climate change, immigration reform and same-sex marriage. It ramped up even more to engage in pro-Affordable Care Act advocacy during the open enrollment period that ran from Oct. 1, 2013, through March 31. It also hired staffers on short-term contracts to train 1,700 “fellows” in grassroots advocacy and fundraising.

“A key piece of OFA’s mission has always been to create the next generation of progressive leaders, and, as expected, some staff and certainly many of our more than 1,700 spring fellows have now moved to other organizations after helping reach the expectations-beating 8 million enrollees” in the Obamacare health exchanges, Finkenbinder added.

OFA raised close to $4 million from its top 10 donors during its first 15 months.

David Shaw, founder of investment management firm D.E. Shaw, became the first donor to give a cumulative $1 million to the group after he gave $500,000 in the first quarter of 2014, matching the amount he gave in 2014. OFA has opted to disclose all contributions of $250 or more.

While millions more came from four- and five-figure checks, the vast majority that OFA has raised is from contributors giving $250 or less. In the first quarter of 2014, OFA raised $5.88 million from 124,000 donors. The average contribution was $38.68.